


you're too hard to forget

by drizzly_bear



Series: lie to me [2]
Category: The Prom - Sklar/Beguelin/Martin
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dumbasses, F/F, Fix-It of Sorts, Hopeful Ending, Post-Canon, they are...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-20 01:07:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19367155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drizzly_bear/pseuds/drizzly_bear
Summary: Memory comes in fragments, like shattered glass. Some parts clear, some parts blurry, some with jagged edges. The waves of time can warp and soften them all they like, but the memories will always be there. Some things can't be forgotten, and several months after she last saw Alyssa, Emma stills remembers everything.Still inspired by 5 Seconds of Summer's 'Lie To Me'





	you're too hard to forget

**Author's Note:**

> this follows directly on from 'i wish we never met', so if you haven't read that just pop over and read that now! otherwise you might be a little confused.  
> this isn't a part of the songfic challenge anymore, but there's an alternate version of 'Lie To Me' featuring Julia Michaels, and i couldn't leave my girls where they were, even though these fics have been a struggle to write, so... here we go.

 

_it’s 3AM and the moonlight’s testing me_  
_if i can make it til dawn then it won’t be hard to see_  
_i ain’t happy_

Emma can’t sleep. She can never really sleep, anymore. Not since the source of all light and warmth and joy in her life disappeared, and she could never tell you why but Emma just knows that it was her fault.

Most nights, she just stares out of her window blankly, running over in her mind the moments they’d shared. Years of them. Memories are like pieces of glass, she reflects. Her memories of Edgewater are dark and blurry, jagged edges worn down with time. There are also those memories she cherishes, polished bright and gleaming like Alyssa’s eyes, Alyssa’s smile. Each memory of each moment she had with Alyssa is colorful and translucent, slotting together to form a stained glass masterpiece, topped by the sparkling memory of a perfect prom. But then there’s the bittersweet memory of her acceptance at NYU. And then the almost-ominous neon glow of parties and nights out. These memories have sharp edges; will cut Emma if she’s not careful. The tears spilling over from Alyssa’s eyes that Emma had pretended not to see when she had broken up with her. The sympathetic kindness and the brittle quality of Alyssa’s smile when Alyssa had broken up with her.

Alyssa had broken up with her; had left her; had flown all the way to England, actually. But Emma still knew that it was her fault, somehow. She’d had plenty of time to think about it. Months of accumulated sleepless nights.

Emma knows how it must have looked to Alyssa. Had almost planned it that way. How she had thrown herself into her new college life, into the pride and the parties, trying to forget how far away Alyssa was, how Emma had left her behind. Alyssa hadn’t needed her. Alyssa had done so well on her own that she had been ready to fly far away and leave Emma behind. And Emma had gotten so lost in trying to forget some things and remember others that she hadn’t even noticed that she was losing something important until it was right in front of her and walking away.

She knows that it’s her fault. Knows that Alyssa could always always tell when she was lying. And so Emma knows that Alyssa thinks that Emma had lied, when Alyssa had asked if Emma still loved her. Emma had thought that she’d been lying too.

But she’d been wrong. Emma has tried, and she isn’t able to live without Alyssa. She isn’t able to stop loving Alyssa. Alyssa had said she didn’t love Emma anymore, and Alyssa seems to be fine without her. But something deep within Emma is still holding on, some ember of a hope that hasn’t been able to let go. Alyssa hadn’t said ‘I don’t love you’, she had said ‘I don’t think I feel the same’. So maybe Emma still had a chance, and she wouldn’t be able to rest until that niggling hope had been put to sleep.

Emma hasn’t talked to Alyssa in months. The only way Emma can find out anything about her is by asking Barry. She knows that he and Alyssa have kept in touch – he’d become a replacement father figure to the both of them since he and the other actors had crashed into their lives.

Over and over again during the last interminable months, Emma had been asking him the same questions.

“How’s Alyssa?”

“Fine.”

“What’s she doing?”

“Studying law.”

“Is she seeing anyone?”

A shrug.

Barry won’t give her more than that. He refuses to take sides between them, so no matter what or how often Emma asks, she never gains traction. Her life is a blank word document, cursor blinking endlessly. Her life is a scratched DVD, frozen and never starting again.

Emma is tired. She is endlessly tired and never tired enough to fall asleep. She is weary of trying and failing and killing time when there isn’t even any point to it anymore. Every day feels the same, going through the motions, eking out the days. She’s sick of inaction, so she rolls over and texts Barry. Emma knows Alyssa’s in England somewhere, studying law at Oxford, but she has no idea how to find her. Barry might. If he’s willing to tell her.

There’s more to what happened when Alyssa came to New York than Emma knows. There’s Alyssa’s side of the story to consider, and Barry is the one who knows it. She won’t get it from him, though. He’s a surprisingly good secret keeper, and while Emma can tell that Alyssa’s told him something, he won’t tell her what. But she has some money saved, and it’s good for nothing if it’s not good for getting her to Alyssa.

She has to see Alyssa. In person. It’s the only way Emma knows she can make things right again. And even if it doesn’t work, Emma won’t be able to live with herself if she doesn’t at least try.

Later, at a less ungodly hour in the morning, a buzzing from her phone wakes her from her fitful half-sleep. It’s Barry, and Emma grabs her phone and fumbles her glasses on to read it, heart jumping awake.

_What are you doing up at 3AM?_ He texts. Then, _why should I tell you where Alyssa is now?_

Emma takes a breath and seizes her last piece of desperate courage. _I want to go see her. I know I messed up. But I also know I can’t live without her and I have to go find her and apologize. I have to._

_Alright, honey,_ comes the reply. _I don’t know if she’ll talk to you, but you’re right. You have to try._

And he sends her an address.

_flashing back to new york city  
i was dumb but you undid me_

Emma pays the cab driver and walks towards the door, dripping from the pouring rain. All she has with her is a small suitcase, packed hurriedly. She didn’t sleep much on the flight, but then she never sleeps much anyways, so did it matter?

She knocks tentatively and soundlessly on the door, then tries again, knocking harder this time. The rain is still misting down in endless grey sheets. She’d forgotten to bring an umbrella.

Her knuckles sting. A few moments pass. She wipes raindrops off her glasses.

Alyssa opens the door.

She is wearing a warm, fluffy robe and bunny slippers. Her hair is in disarray and her eyes look tired. She’s the most stunning thing Emma has ever seen, and she aches to fall into Alyssa’s arms. But she doesn’t move.

Shock flickers across Alyssa’s features before they school themselves back to impassiveness.

“Emma,” Alyssa says flatly from the doorway, and Emma wants to cry. She had always loved the way Alyssa said her name, how she’d whisper it and shout it and grin it, Emma’s name a celebration and a secret and a caress. With joy and wonder and love.

But now she says it with a world of blank nothingness behind it and Emma can feel her heart breaking all over again.

“Hi, Alyssa,” Emma says, hunching her shoulders against the rain, trying not to sound miserable.

She clearly fails at that, because Alyssa says, “You look like a drowned puppy.”

Rainwater drips from Emma’s flattened curls onto her nose. “Thanks?”

There is a beat. This feels awkward. This feels wrong. There never used to be this deadly silence between them.

Finally, Alyssa says, “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to apologize. For how things ended in New York.” Emma shifts from foot to foot. “I had to see you.”

“So you… saved up and you booked a flight and you just came here?” Alyssa sounds skeptical.

“Yeah.”

“You couldn’t have just messaged me?”

Emma blinks. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

Alyssa looks at her face, and bursts out laughing. A moment later, Emma joins in. The awkwardness is still there, but the icy silence between them is broken.

“Well, after all that, you may as well come in.” Alyssa holds the door open.

_classic me to run  
when it feels right_

Emma sits across from Alyssa at the kitchen table, huddled in a warm blanket, dry now but still cold. She wraps her fingers around the mug of tea in front of her, trying to absorb as much of its heat as she can.

“You’re drinking tea now?” Emma jokes. “Really embracing this whole British thing, aren’t you?”

“When in Rome,” Alyssa says with a halfhearted shrug, effectively ending that thread of conversation.

“How are you doing?” Emma asks, desperately trying to rekindle a spark of companionship.

“Good.” Alyssa nods. “The course will look really good on my resume.”

“I thought it wasn’t about that?” Emma recalls what Alyssa had said in their last conversation. All those months ago, all those miles away. “Not an ‘Alyssa Greene’ thing, but something you actually wanted to do?”

“You remember that?” Emma might be imagining it, but as Alyssa says that, she maybe looks a little more hopeful, a little brighter.

“Of course I remember,” Emma says. How could she forget? It was the last time she had ever talked to Alyssa and she had gone over it again and again and again, trying to pinpoint everything they’d said, trying to work out where it had broken, what Emma had done or said, how she might fix it.

“It’s a brilliant course,” Alyssa says quietly, eyes fixed on something just behind Emma’s left ear. Emma resists the impulse to turn around and look for it. She knows there’s nothing behind her; Alyssa just won’t look her in the eye. Emma can’t look Alyssa in the eye, either. She gazes into the depths of her mug instead, as if trying to glean answers from the tea swirling in it.

“Are you enjoying it?” It is – was – unusual for Alyssa to be this reticent and it scares Emma.

Alyssa still doesn’t say anything, and Emma risks a direct look at Alyssa’s face. She’s staring off into nothingness, just blank. It’s so quiet that Emma feels like she has to hold her breath. She can hear her own heartbeat echoing dully through her ears. Then Alyssa shakes herself together and looks at Emma. “So how are you? How’s Eve?”

“Eve?” Emma repeats, confused. “She’s fine, probably? I don’t know, I haven’t talked to her for ages.”

“Oh.” Alyssa furrows her brow, making it look elegant in a way Emma never could.

Emma can feel another awful awkward pause in the conversation coming up, so she rushes in with, “Look, Alyssa, I have to be honest here, so I’m going to say what I came here to say without any more sidestepping around it.”

She looks up at Alyssa to see how she’s taking it. Alyssa nods stiffly.

Emma curls her mug of tea a little closer to her and stares down into it, unable to look back up at Alyssa. “Truthfully? Things are awful without you. And I’m sorry, because I know it was my fault things fell apart like that.”

“I was the one who broke up with you,” Alyssa points out, her voice hitching slightly.

“Yes, but you had reason to. It was my fault we were growing apart, because I was pushing you away. I missed you so much when I was in New York and you were in Indiana but then you got the scholarship and you didn’t need me anymore. You never did. And I didn’t know what to do. I guess I was trying to prove to myself that I didn’t need you either. And then you came to visit and I wanted to show you that I was going to be fine without you but. Well. That didn’t work out.” Emma’s voice shakes and peters out, and her eyes burn but she doesn’t cry. She ran out of tears to cry months ago.

“Emma. Why didn’t you tell me? I thought you were living it up in New York. You’d started a new life for yourself and I could see that there wasn’t room for me in it.”

Emma shakes her head mutely.

Alyssa continues, voice growing harsher. “I can tell when you’re lying, Emma. You’re a bad liar. You always have been. So I know you weren’t telling the truth when you said you loved me. So I… let you go. I had to let you go. You were never going to do it on your own. So maybe I broke up with you, but you left me first.”

Emma shakes her head again. “I’m sorry, Alyssa. I lost sight of loving you, of us. I messed everything up. I’m _sorry_.”

“That doesn’t fix anything,” Alyssa spits. “It doesn’t make anything better.”

“I know,” Emma says, because Alyssa’s right. “I didn’t think it would.”

“Then why are you here?” Alyssa looks lost. “After I told you I didn’t feel the same and we broke up… why are you here?”

“I didn’t know what else to do. I had to try. I can’t – life without you isn’t worth living, Alyssa. I thought maybe it could be, but it isn’t. That night, when I said I love you, we both thought I was lying, but I wasn’t. I was lost and confused but I realized that I still loved you at the heart of everything. I love you. I haven’t stopped loving you, and I don’t know if I ever will. And I know you said you didn’t feel the same, but I just needed to tell you that because the last few months have been hell without you and I just… I need closure, I guess.”

“Emma, I…” Alyssa sounds physically pained. “I was lying too.”

Emma freezes, everything still except for her heart which is pounding, pounding, pounding.

“Well, no, I wasn’t,” Alyssa corrects herself. “When I said I didn’t feel the same, I thought you were lying. So by saying I didn’t feel the same, what I really meant was that I loved you. I did, I loved you, but I thought it would be kinder to just let you go.”

“You loved me?” Emma can feel her heart doing about sixteen different things at once.

“Still do,” Alyssa says. It would be matter of fact if Emma didn’t know her well enough to tell when Alyssa was hurting. “I thought I could get over you, but I was wrong about that too.”

Emma passes right over the threshold of disbelief and into hysterics. She wheezes, “I – you – we –”

Alyssa looks mildly alarmed. “Just breathe, Emma.”

Emma takes a huge breath and says, “This is so messed up. So you and I both thought I was lying, and I wasn’t, and I thought you were telling the truth and you were but you were also kind of lying.”

Alyssa cracks a wry smile. “I guess I can see the irony.”

“Irony?” Emma says, letting her head fall into her hands and clutching at her hair. She bangs her forehead gently on the table. “Alyssa, we’re so _fucking_ stupid.”

“Emma?” Alyssa’s voice is soft. It’s gentle and it’s concerned and it’s the exact way she used to say Emma’s name when she was upset.

Emma shakes her head. “I can’t believe it.”

She had been so wrong about some things and so right about others. The smoldering embers of Emma’s heart flare up, and she sits up and claws her hair out of her face. She looks directly into Alyssa’s dark eyes. “Alyssa. I love you. Do you love me?”

“I do,” Alyssa says. It’s soft and it’s quiet and there’s a world of hurt behind it but there’s no hesitation.

Emma groans, scrubbing her palms down her cheeks. “We wasted so much time.”

“What now?” Alyssa asks. She looks shell-shocked. “Where do we go from here?”

Emma reaches across the table and tentatively places her fingers on the back of Alyssa’s hand. “Can we – do you want to try again?”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to lose you again.” Alyssa’s fingers curl reflexively around Emma’s, like they had never left their spot there.

Emma swallows hard. “I’m sure. I need you in my life, Alyssa.”

Alyssa smiles; a small, wary smile. Emma smiles back encouragingly, and Alyssa’s smile widens and turns hopeful.

“Oh, come here,” Alyssa says and pulls Emma up, out of her chair and around the table to fall into her arms.

And there, in each other’s embrace, for the first time in months, Emma and Alyssa are home.

It hasn’t fixed anything, and it isn’t all better, but… it might be a start.


End file.
